


Exodus

by Eipthor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Rigel Black Series - murkybluematter
Genre: Gen, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28439391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eipthor/pseuds/Eipthor
Summary: Harriet Potter did not come home that night.Not a new work. Last fic to move over from ff.net
Comments: 8
Kudos: 81
Collections: Rigel Black Chronicles Appreciation, Rigel Black Universe





	Exodus

James did not deal well with confusion. He didn't like to not know things and he liked worse when others knew before him.

He had been a bookworm as a child, absorbing in his early years whole shelves of books full of information ranging from the world changing to the tedious to the fascinating but most likely useless. All little boys love dragons. By age 6, James, like all self respecting young wizards had a favorite breed, in depth knowledge of its habitat and diet, and several plans on what he would do WHEN, not if, he first encountered it, with fantastical battles ending in a scaly carnage, galleons galore, an awestruck nation, and weeping proud parents with hugs and a warm supper waiting just a pinch of powder away. James' dragon phase lasted for two months, though his model Ironbelly remained a constant fixture on his bedside table for years after. Then he moved on to international dueling regulations, then to quidditch, quodpot, grindylows and sneaking charms. His foray into astronomical divination had been nipped in the bud after only four days, when his mother had refused to see his true potential as a seer, having stolen her raspberry trifle because the Venus had told him he would.

At Hogwarts, he was not the top of his year, but he was always near it, with E's and O's despite a lackadaisical attitude toward essay writing, and a shift in interest away from reading and towards the fruits of his knowledge, usually in the sweet citrusy form of revenge. For what good was all that information if it never reached it's loud, or fiery, or slimy, nostril turning, sweet-merlin-what-even-is-this-stuff end? If he paid attention and surrounded himself with bright people, most of the information he needed would eventually wander within his grasp through observation and careful conversation with little enough effort on his part.

James was adrift on life, floating breezily by. Whenever he didn't have life's answers, he frequently found that by simply striding forth with boyish confidence and the presumption that things would sort themselves out, things often did, and if they didn't James was still quick with his wand and a painfully clever.

Harriet Potter however, his little Harry, had grown secretive, more careful and absent than what in a child he could wave off as a timid or private nature. She was becoming impossible and altogether puzzling. And she could not be solved. There were no guidebooks, no sources to go to with insight any more apt than his own, not even Lily who years ago had disabused him of the notion that 'you're a girl too, aren't you' gave her any better understanding of their daughter than he had. Careful guided conversation that once produced founts of overwhelming knowledge or burbles and sputters of pleasant chatter, now found the source dammed up, well dried, efforts only producing simple yes's and no's, nods and hmms, sure's and unrevealing indeeds.

He simply did not have the answers. He never did. Not as a child when she adopting disturbingly cute Snape-like tendencies. Not when she and Archie went off to school and stopped talking to them. Not when she came back, but not really, because she kept disappearing off with boys and potions and boys who were honestly Dad only around in a potions capacity. _"Is that what they're calling it."_ The Marauders were far more amused than supportive in the face of James' plight.

And now. Now it was almost eleven o'clock, and Harry was not yet home for dinner. She was not with her uncles. She was not in Diagon or at the Potion's Guild, as she said. She was not with her friends, or at least the three that she'd deigned to mention to him. He wasn't sure what would be worse. If Harry was so absorbed in potioneering that she only had three friends and no acquaintances her age that she'd ever mentioned, or that she did have other relationships, but had for some reason kept them as secret as everything else in her life.

She had not activated her emergency portkey.

His daughter was not anywhere to be found. Lily had been sent to bed, but kept wandering away from her path to stand behind his armchair, staring with him toward the fireplace, or to open the door and check the front stoop, or to the kitchen's wide window, large enough for even the minister's great pompous owl, or to Addy's room, where at least one of their children could be found abed.

James sat staring into the flames overwhelmed with the things he did not know. He did not know where his daughter was. He did not know anything about his daughter. It was not that he could not put the pieces together, it was that none had been given to him, and he did not know where to find him. When he asked Harry for them, she would pass him completed pictures, as if he did not know there were holes in them somewhere, where he could not touch to feel the edges for clues, nor peer at in the hopes of filling in or seeing through. As if he couldn't feel the gaps in his knowledge behind the simple pictures she presented, far too simple for a girl like her.

Harriet Potter did not come home that night. James Potter did not sleep that night. Instead he went to work hours early the next day. The paperwork for the missing persons report was filed just in time for Harriet Potter's abashed, half-smiling face to make the morning print, staining the front page of the morning Prophet with dark and faded inky eyes.

~~~~

The disappearance of the Potter heir was sensational. It was tragic, dramatic, breaking hearts and Prophet sales records. Over the next four days the story netted the Prophet no less than two dozen well read features across the morning, evening and Special Edition! evening papers. Harriet Potter was a lost and deeply sympathetic waif of twelve, or thirteen. Or sixteen. It varied. And she was so boyish who could tell. She was a child traumatized by the violent events of her cousin's life, and had burst out of existence from the pain of it. She was a prodigy, a genius, stolen away by Mr Burke's nefarious Russian vampire clients. She was a tart, a promiscuous girl with dark and naughty interests seen frequently on the arms of wealthy dark pureblood princes and in the dark bowels of the alleys where only working girls and paying gents had any business straying. James was a caring father, a dashing giant of a man brought from heroic high to sorrowful broken low. He had loved his daughter. He had killed his daughter. His daughter had been taken, kidnapped as leverage against her powerful father.

Henrietta Potter ran away from home to make sweet semi-incestuous love with Rigel Black, her fiancé and cousin. Harriet Potter was really Rigel Black. Harry Black was really Archie Potter, and they had been switched at birth so the Blacks would have a male heir, but the glamour was wearing off so they had to get rid of her. Him. Them. Harriett Potter was a secret squib, faking it by taking her classes by mail. Harry Potter was a man!

Prophet profits soared. The world was their oyster, and the readers were drooling at their feet for more. They could ride this flow for at least two more straight weeks of front page coverage. Longer if she was found. Longer still if found dead. Rita already had her drafts ready, full of the girl's harrowing tale, one for each scenario. Corrections could be made later. What mattered was getting it out there first. Rarely in a newspaperwoman's career did a story have such momentum. Harriet Potter would soon be more profitable than Rigel Black.

All this good cheer in Prophet offices stopped abruptly around noon on the fourth day, when news came in from the auror offices and tilted the world on its axis, knocking lost, taken, dead, missing, beloved Harriet Potter off the front page.

~~~~

It was Lucius Malfoy who noticed it first.

That is not entirely accurate. Remus Lupin had noticed first and been ineffectually confundused, followed by much anger and swearing, before eventually being sworn to secrecy. Madame Hurst noticed first and nodded solemnly and looked the other way, and began making plans for the clinic: funding, new best treatment and patient care regulations, medical licensure questions, which employees could be told and kept and which would have to be quietly let go. And when that was all done, how to tell her husband. Hermione Granger had been told and, after a seemingly unending series of questions, had smiled and asked whether she would need a special permit to floo that far, or should she start researching into portkeys, and many further things after that. Mr Burke had been told, and had slowly begun raising prices in anticipation of rising transportation costs. Regulus Black had been told months ago as had 'Will,' giving them time to learn, create and train others in the spells necessary. Harriet Potter had been told, as late as possible, the day of, so that she wouldn't have time to change her mind and interfere. Or that was the plan before Leo realized that keeping secrets from Harry was futile and stupid and instead just asked her to keep her mouth shut and, please, for her own safety, come with.

Lucius Malfoy noticed first, four days later, first after thousands of people knowing and keeping quiet, or sworn silent when needed, and smiling secretly, grimly, gloriously to one another. Noticed first after the announcement six weeks ago, over cheers and tankards at the Phoenix.

Lucius noticed first.

Then ordered an underling, the fat and stupid, but wealthy enough to be irritating Cornelius Fudge, to go to Diagon, notice, and report it to the ministry.

Knockturn alley was abandoned. The shops were dark and unminded. The streets were cleared of customers and layabouts. The merchandise had been removed, even some of the signs further in. At the first corner, at the end of the eerie one street ghost town, somehow worse than when it had been filled with grime and poisons, hags and men of ill intention, the alley simply stopped. Where the lane should have twisted a sharp 35 thirty five degree turn, almost doubling back on itself to turn onto Quizzick Alley before branching off into the vast network of dark, narrow, and impossibly winding paths of the lower alleys, there was instead a brick wall. Just the same as the one that opened the alleys on the back wall of The Leaky Cauldron and closed them, miles and miles after the homes and storefronts fell away, leaving only the vast and empty brick lined corridor of Evanhue Alley. Just the same, only miles before it should be.

One quarter of Britain's magical population had disappeared.

~~~~

Or maybe only one tenth. Or as much as three quarters. Magical Britain did not have a census nor a comprehensive record keeping system, nor any records that were not optional and self reported. There were only five vampires in magical Britain according to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and one of them, unbeknownst to them, had been dead for ten years. No vampire, nor any intelligent of 'being' status really, voluntarily submitted him or her or themselves to ministerial inquiry, and no one wanted to be the unlucky fellow to attempt to drag one in. Births were not recorded unless they occurred at St Mungo's, or were self reported, often years later after a child proved to be magical. Deaths were likewise. There was no record for most of the inhabitants of the Lower Alleys, and no way of estimating as mapping the Alleys was impossible. They changed when they knew they were being observed. Some one could wander through with a destination in mind and the Alleys would guide their feet where they needed to go. The route may not always lead in the same directions, nor cover the same distance, nor pass the same landmarks, but the destination was always there at the end, with the same neighbors and pavement cracks and street vendors on each trip, as though it never had moved at all. But enter with no destination, or worse, enter knowing that that they don't know where to go, that they're lost, and the Alley's will lose them, sometimes for days before spitting them out.

No one knew anything about the Lower Alleys at all really. And that hadn't mattered so much. Magical Britain and it' lesser cousin had politely ignored each other for years. Both were happy to look the other way so long as one didn't make a large enough mess of things to force the other's interference.

But now.

Now there were missing persons reports to be filed. For some one. A lot of some ones. With names and faces probably, except who on earth knew. Did one even file reports in a situation like this? Were they even missing? Had they left? Were they dead?

Did it even matter?

Obviously there were a great number of people missing and something… bad.. odd… well something anyway, was afoot. But not really. Because people weren't missing if you couldn't prove there were ever people there.

What were the consequences? Were there any? The two societies existed almost entirely distinct from each other. There was no gaping hole in the economy or social sphere as there would be had any other group of who knows how many disappeared. Obviously not. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken…

How long had it taken? The last report of an Alley-goer being seen had been over a week ago. Clearly no one was being missed too terribly.

The political system was in tact, as the Alleys had never participated in votes or politics. The seat reserved for their king, to the left of the minister in the Wizengamot, had centuries ago been converted into the a glorified coat rest for whoever may be in power. The public might be galvanized by the scandal, but it was difficult to gage. There were no faces, or stories, or details of any sort to direct outrage at. It was difficult to say something more could have been done, when no one knew what happened or who was to blame. And such a thing would be largely unprecedented. Wizards had never been the sort to care for altruism or social safety nets or the wealth of the commons. Magic lent itself to a very 'by your bootstraps' mentality. In society's eyes, when you can magic away your problems, there is little sympathy for those unwilling to put in the time and effort to do so.

And yet surely there was some sort of repercussion for letting that much of the population swan off.

Swan off because according to Burke at least they weren't dead. It had taken an embarrassingly long amount of time for ministry to realize Burke at least had contacts in the alley, if apparently no one else did. He had simply stated that he was sworn to secrecy and could only say that no laws were broken and no people were harmed. He wore the smirk of a man who knew things. In this case, what he knew was mostly that in the coming weeks gaps would begin to reveal themselves in Magical Britain's supply chains, and he would make mint bridging them. That smirk had not impressed Head Auror Potter, short fused after being forcibly suspended from his daughter's case to prevent him from running himself and the rest of the department into the ground, only to be dragged back hours later after confirmation of Fudge's barely sensible declarations in the ministry lobby.

Burke's smirk was shattered by the weighty fist of the Head Auror moments later. Or possibly by the wall said fist slammed said smirk into.

And with that, James Potter was back on suspension.

~~~~

Leo Hurst had eyes and ears everywhere and where he couldn't put eyes and ears, he used his own. Most of his subjects would look out of place at a ministry function amongst the social elite. His father's status had caused him countless headaches over the years as it conflicted with his own necessarily invisible position, but on such pretentious occasions, it was at least useful. If still irritating.

And so Leo could hear the gossip and see the signs, see the eyes watching young heiress Potter. His Harry.

This summer there would be another push at the ever looming marriage law and Dumbledore had no tricks left up his sleeves to stop it. When it passed Harry would be the most eligible half blood in Britain. She was young and good looking enough, but rumored to be nearly as powerful as her cousin. She was heiress to House Potter and a potions prodigy on the verge of cracking secrets worth millions.

Heirs Lestrange and Malfoy had already been seen making moves, with rumors that Flint and Rosier were doing so out of public view. Nott was tracking her across the room right now. And those were just the more age appropriate suitors. There were several middle aged and elderly Wizengamot members in the room looking for a young, beautiful, fertile second wife.

Lord and Lady Potter bore the looks with some distaste, though they didn't hide it as well as their daughter. They could manage the looks, comfortable in the knowledge that their daughter was protected, and the looks would remain as they were, idle and from a distance.

But Leo knew what no one in the room but Harry did. She would be coming of age in the coming fall, not two summers from now, when Archie would be of age and in the country to protect her.

Harry would come into her maturity even more terribly than she had come to her magical majority. She would be trapped in Hogwarts with no way to retrieve her or defend her and hordes would come rushing in.

She had to get out of the country, and he would have to be the one to do it, as she was too stubborn to leave on her own.

But he couldn't leave the Alleys. There was no one fit to take his place as king, though a few of the less reputable sort were ready to claim it in his absence. There were a few promising young duelists that Leo had been watching, Harry chief among them, but they all needed at least two more years to hone their skills, and the youngest and best another three before he could be taken seriously as a leader, even with his abilities. There had been kings younger than he before, but their youth tempted challengers, and they were quickly worn away not by the ability, but by the shear volume of attempted usurpers.

He couldn't leave, especially now, when Rispah and her ladies were about to come under fire as the marriage law came to fruition. He would have to take them with.

He knew it was possible. Diagon and the Alleys beyond were all just one long pocket dimension extending out from the Leaky. He would just have to close the Alleys' entrance at Diagon and move the entrance to the Lower Alleys somewhere else, without disturbing or alerting the rest of the pocket's residents.

It turned out to be easier than expected. Not the warding to move the Alleys. Black had charged triple and Will swore at him constantly during the last week before the move. But finding a new entrance was gloriously easy, after all the headaches of convincing the populous while maintaining secrecy had presented.

Their mass exodus turned out to be less of an immigration problem than an annexation problem. Leo was in a position to sell the taxes and abilities of a fully self sufficient society to any country willing to house them. The sheer volume of creature blood they would be inviting across their borders was a point of contention, but the vampires were demonstrably civil and they and the werewolves had sworn to remain confined to the Alley for at least the first four years of the arrangement.

In the end they settled in Gabon. Leo was looking forward to the warm weather, and the dense foliage and lax magical regulations would allow the riskier side of the Alley's to flourish away from prying eyes. It was as good a place as any to hide for a few years until the heat died down.

**Author's Note:**

> We should take Bikini Bottom and push it somewhere else!
> 
> Side note: There are lots of other great fics under the ff Rigel Black discussion group. I moved mine over because ao3 seems to be where RBC things are now and it's easier to search. And because Doreling moved the prompt list over, so it felt like time. If you're starved for content and weren't in the fandom four years ago when these were first being written, I recommend checking them out and sending them some love. Happiest of New Years!


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